Silicon Valley has a few rare bright spots

Commentary: No breadlines yet, but many compete for fewer jobs

SAN FRANCISCO (MarketWatch) -- Jobs are disappearing across the United States at a horrifying pace.

It's frightening to tally up the numbers, especially when you consider that more than a quarter-million job cuts have been announced since Jan. 1.

While Silicon Valley certainly has not been spared, it also isn't suffering quite the same degree of fallout as other regions. Stars such as Intel Corp.
INTC, +0.14%
eBay Inc.
EBAY, -0.88%
and Yahoo Inc.
YHOO, -2.00%
are shedding thousands of workers, but others continue to soldier on. That, of course, begs the question of whether there's more to come in California's high-tech cradle.

My guess is that unfortunately, no one should be banking on a turnaround anytime soon.

The tech sector played a part in those big cuts last month. As demand for new gear has fallen off a cliff among corporations and consumers, many firms are using steep job cuts as the fastest way to meet financial targets. Preliminary numbers indicate 46,436 tech-related job cuts were announced in January, according to executive outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas, Inc. in Chicago.

But executive recruiters in Silicon Valley, and the tech business in general, see glimmers of hope in some areas of technology.

"It's not all doom and gloom," said Robert Greene, founder and CEO of GreeneSearch, Inc. in San Mateo, about 20 minutes north of Silicon Valley. Greene works with many startups, some of which are still hiring, and bigger software companies. "Overall, hiring for engineers and product managers remains pretty strong."

Greene founded his firm after leaving Sun Microsystems Inc.
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in 2004. He said some of his clients in the Web 2.0 space still are hiring. Companies like Mint.com, the personal financial information aggregator, and social network darling Facebook maintain they have job openings even after venture capitalists last year warned startups need to curtail spending.

Palo Alto-based Facebook has more than 30 job listings on its Website, including jobs for software engineers, software architects, media analysts and data center technicians. Mint, in nearby Mountain View, has six jobs, three of them for Java-related software engineers.

Robert Forman, who earlier this year started RLForman & Associates with offices in nearby Woodside, sees many opportunities in building and supporting infrastructure, an area which also could see a boost as a result of President Barack Obama's proposed economic stimulus package. Other opportunities are at companies mostly bucking economic trends, such as Google Inc.
GOOG, -1.10%
and Apple Inc.
AAPL, -0.87%
But competition is fierce.

"Google laid off 100 recruiters but that doesn't mean they are not recruiting," Forman said.

"They are just being more specific. Are there too many for each job coming up? Yeah," he added. "It is difficult because there are more people than there are jobs."

DJ Patil, chief scientist for privately held LinkedIn Corp., recently told MarketWatch there also are opportunities in healthcare, clean tech and, surprisingly, even in consumer electronics. Also located in Mountain View, the social networking site for professionals is becoming an increasingly popular tool for networking and for former colleagues to recommend each other for jobs.

Karen Kizis, who heads up recruiting firm Hire: Creative, is busy looking for candidates to fill jobs in areas such as information architecture and designing user experience.

Still, the few jobs available could be ephemeral, as companies decide to make further cuts. Recruiters also say many of the people they want to place already have a job. Getting them to leave a good job is difficult right now.

"I'm getting more candidates than have come to me than in the past," recruiter Greene said.

"But there are a percentage of candidates that I cannot place, the ones who are mediocre," he added. "Good folks who are getting laid off are finding jobs really quickly."

Of course, as more companies let the ax fall, even these "good folks" will face a demand-supply imbalance in the job market.

Just in case, it wouldn't hurt to clip a few coupons, not to mention pad the savings account -- if you still have one.

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